Kirstie Alley says miscarriage was start of her weight gain

Kirstie Alley says that miscarrying her only pregnancy at 3 months along in 1990 was the beginning of her weight gain. In her new book, Kirstie writes, "When the baby was gone, I just didn’t really get over it. Neither did my body. I so throughly convinced my body that it was still pregnant after nine months that I had milk coming from my breasts. I was still fat, I was still grieving, and I had just been told it was very possible I would never be able to have children. Fat, childless, with little hope for any future children…that’s when I began to get fat."

I feel for Kirstie. I have suffered from recurrent miscarriages and I did end up gaining weight and keeping it on for quite awhile. It is a rough thing to go through. I hope she finds herself happy and healthy. Not necessarily skinny!

Katie
on March 19th, 2005

I also feel for Kirstie. I’ve lost two pregnancies and I’ve never fully recovered. I hope Kirstie is more at peace now.

Raincitygirl
on March 19th, 2005

Miscarriage hits different women differently. I’ve known women who lost a wanted pregnancy, and were sad for a bit, and then okay. I’ve also known women who became deeply depressed for a long time as the result of miscarriage.

A roommate of mine back in university was a research assistant on a study which tracked women who’d recently miscarried and conducted blood tests at regular intervals. Apparently the professor conducting the study was hypothesizing that unusually severe and long-lasting grief after a miscarriage was caused by hormones going wild in some women after their miscarriages. I never did find out the results of the study, but if a biological factor were found to be at least partly responsible, maybe the insensitive people who sometimes dismiss a woman’s very real pain as an overreaction might shut up! On the other hand, it might lead to the idea that grieving after a miscarriage is somehow a medical problem to be ‘fixed’, rather than a natural and healthy response to a bad thing.

I think it also depends on how many miscarriages a woman’s had and if there were severe complications. Most miscarriages in the first trimester have no complications at all. But if Kirstie Alley was told she’d probably never have children after a miscarriage, it probably entailed severe complications. That’s the loss not only of that particular pregnancy but future fertility as well.

A cousin of mine was severely depressed after having an abortion at four months, shortly after discovering she had cancer. Of course, the radiation therapy and the stress of having a life-threatening illness probably didn’t help the depression! But one of her major concerns was worry over whether she’d be able to conceive again. The doctors thought the radiation *probably* wouldn’t affect her future fertility, but offered no guarantees. And because pregnancy hormones mask the signs of returning cancer, she’d have to be in remission for several years before they could even *try* to conceive and see if she still could. She was lucky: she beat the cancer and four years later had a beautiful daughter who’s now in preschool (and they had a second daughter last November!) But she was very depressed at the time, and a lot of it was about the loss of the pregnancy and the chance that she might not get pregnant again (while the rest of the family was depressed over her cancer!)

It also depends on if a woman miscarries repeatedly. My mother was a ‘serial spontaneous aborter’ in medical lingo who had three miscarriages in a row and became severely depressed, a) because of multiple traumas, and b) because of the idea that her body was somehow ‘defective’, that it couldn’t carry a baby to term. I know Courteney Cox Arquette had multiple miscarriages prior to her daughter birth, and I’d imagine that she probably had a really hard time emotionally, having to go through that trauma over and over.

Prissy
on March 23rd, 2005

How awful, I had a spontaneuous abortion at 5 weeks and it is awful. I went on to have a baby 1 1/2 years later. But the grief and torment is awful. I remember the nurse came in and said,” Well, your pregnancy test is positive, but your uterus is empty, it must have come out in the toilet”, I HATED her. It is an awful feeling to know that. I hope they were more sensitive with her than they were with me. I cried every day thinking that I had flushed my baby.

Erica
on March 23rd, 2005

Oh my God Prissy, that is the worst thing I’ve ever heard a nurse do! How could anyone say something so horrible? I am so very sorry that happened to you.